Proposed Mead

I'm busy composing a new mead recipe. The intention is too make a dry, high alcohol mead that will age for several years.

So far this is the outline:

15 lbs honey
top up with water to 4 gallons
champagne yeast
all the required yeast nutrients and energizer

8 oranges (zest and strained juice only)
5 cinnamon sticks
5 cloves
8 pods of vanilla
five hands of chopped brown raisins

My idea was to heat all the ingredients except for the vanilla to boiling for 30 minutes with a lid on the pan. After the density reaches 1.000 I intend to rack the mead to a secondary and to add the split vanilla beans to it. I intend to let in sit in the secondary for about 3 months. After that I want to rack it away in 0.5L beer bottles for the remainder of 3 years.

Any criticisms will be appreciated.

Take this with a grain of salt. I probably don't know what I'm talking about.
1. You've got nearly 4 lbs of honey per gallon. You may have problems because that's close to too much sugar for yeast.
2. You may want to increase the time on secondary. I've heard that it's better to bulk age before you divide it. 9 months maybe?

Will you clear it before you divide it? It is my experience that mead takes longer than that to clear by itself.
Do you have something else to drink while you're waiting?

Are you going to leave it on the vanilla beans for 3 months? That seems like a long time on the vanilla.

What would be the problem with that?

About the honey, would that make a decent ferment impossible?

The honey to water ratio is actually less than 3 pounds per gallon. The volume of the honey adds 1 1/4 gallons, so the volume of honey and water is closer to 5 1/4 gallon. 5 1/4 gallons divided by 15 lbs of honey = 2.86 pounds per gallon. The yeast shouldn't have any problems. What brand of champagne yeast are you using? Red Star might not be able to ferment it fully. Red Star Champagne yeast ferments to 13-15% ABV. Your recipe is probably closer to 16%, which would leave it sweet.

Most mead makers don't boil their honey. Some mead makers heat to about 160 degrees, while others don't heat at all. If you do boil, I would suggest adding the oranges at the end of the boil and the raisins, cloves, and cinnamon in the primary or secondary. Eight vanilla beans could be a lot. I'd taste it occasionally and rack off the beans when you get enough flavor.

it's actually topping up to 4 gallons, so the ratio is pretty high. The yeast I'm using is Kitzingers Champagne yeast which I've taken to 18+ABV before.

How much honey can yeast handle?

Sorry, I read your recipe wrong. One of my first meads had an OG of 1.163 (which would be equal to about 17 pounds in 4 gallons). It fermented ok, but I probably wouldn't try it again. How about feeding the fermentation? You could start at a lower gravity and add more honey as the fermentation progresses.

Nerro said:

What would be the problem with that?

Click to expand...

Vanilla can be an overpowering and unpleasant flavor when it gets too strong. But it also mellows with age, I believe, so I dunno. I haven't used it in a mead, so the longer aging time might make 3 months more appropriate, but in a beer I wouldn't leave it with vanilla for more than 2 weeks. You can always try it after a few weeks and if it's getting too strong, rack it into a tertiary fermenter.

I figured I'd just try a ~1glln batch (4L to be precise)

I used ~4# honey and added apple juice (1.5L) I then topped the whole thing off to 4L. In boiling I added a pinch of groud cinnamon and three small cloves. The cloves were removed before pitching.

Now here's the surprise... The SG is 1.148!!! That would amount to roughly 20% ABV!!!

I'm using champagne yeast, I'm very curious to see how long this ferment will require to pick up